


Pas de Deux

by Vituperative_cupcakes



Category: Batman: Arkham (Video Games)
Genre: Edward is a fucking daddy issues nerd and I love him for it, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 03:34:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5852446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vituperative_cupcakes/pseuds/Vituperative_cupcakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce comes to say goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pas de Deux

 

_J'ai aimé, j'ai souffert, maintenant... je hais_

–graffiti inside the Riddler's cell

 

Edward Nygma was in his riddle-lair. To the untrained eye, he was having a minor breakdown. But he was merely performing an emergency re-structuring of the riddle computer with a crowbar.

A capacitor bounced off his goggles as he swung again. God, how the elder Nashton would have laughed seeing him exert himself like this. One of Edward's few regrets was that the old man hadn't lived long enough to properly show him how wrong he was. Probably died laughing.

Edward ground his teeth and swung hard. He missed and hit cement, the impact ringing up and down his arm. He dropped the crowbar and hissed through his teeth.

Edward wrung his shoulder.

It had been one setback after another tonight. If he had lacked even an ounce of perspicacity, he might have come close to admitting defeat. As it was, he would merely have to accede a temporary draw. He stretched, back popping.

The door to the heart of the lair hadn't opened. The myriad sets of alarms he had personally devised hadn't gone off. The only thing that let him know that anyone had broken in was the shadow that stepped out from behind the console.

Edward yelped and stumbled backwards, a momentary feint to throw his opponent off. Really, he was tensing to unleash a powerful strike out of the Wing Chun book he'd been reading.

The Dark Knight stepped forward. There was nothing aggressive in his demeanor, but the solidness of his shape was all the threat he needed. Edward went into a half-praying mantis, half-crouching tiger stance. The crowbar was just to his left. Edward glanced between the Dark Knight and his fallen weapon, estimating with his eyes. If he could scoop it up, if he could duck and roll...

“Hello, Edward.”

That was all. No “Nygma.” no “Eddie.” not even “Riddler, my most dastardly archnemesis.”

just “Edward” in a defeated tone.

Edward's heart suddenly raced. Was he...was he here to admit defeat?

“Where's Miss Kyle,” Edward sneered, “is she going to drop from the ceiling and deal me a sucker punch?”

Batman was a silent shadow.

“I sent her away.”

Edward's mind whirred like the gears in a clock. Sent her away. Sent her where? And why? What was his angle?

The Dark Knight stepped forward. What little light was in the room picked out his square jawline, the shocking blue of his eyes. For once, contempt wasn't twisting his features. He looked, well...

He looked...tired.

Edward scoffed. So the Dark Knight thought he could call it quits after cheating his way through all the Riddler's carefully-set obstacle courses? He wanted to throw himself on the Riddler's mercies?

“I hope you aren't thinking of taking me on without that sneak-thief. You might not be able to win a fight you can't cheat your way out of.”

Nothing. Not even a shaken head.

“Sorry _Dork_ Knight, your childish attempts at deception have failed. Even that phony announcement you concocted to throw me off your trail.” Edward brazenly reached for the crowbar, ready to flinch back. Batman didn't move.

Edward straightened himself up. The weight of the crowbar felt reassuring in his hand. He pointed at the Dark Knight with it.

Batman looked down the shaft of the crowbar. He sighed.

Lifting his hands, he touched a few buttons and his mask made a mechanical sound as it withdrew from his face. He lifted the remaining portion away and Bruce Wayne stared back at him.

Edward made a choking sound and dropped the crowbar again.

Wayne looked beat-up, no doubt about it, but there was something haunted in his eyes that could be seen all the clearer when his mask was off.

Edward was already hard at work formulating scenarios that would make this plausible when Bruce ran fingers through his own hair. The sight momentarily stopped Edward's thought in its tracks.

Bruce noticed him staring.

Edward realized his jaw had dropped open and shut it.

“So...” he said. “you...ah...”

Bruce wasn't finished. Seeking out a hidden seam, he cracked the armor at his torso, let it fall into halves. The arm guards he slid down after a little fiddling. Now he was completely shirtless, muscles flexing in the dim light.

Edward swallowed.

Bruce dropped his arms, looking oddly sheepish. Like he felt naked without the suit.

Edward tried to tamp that thought down.

“Well,” he managed, “this is...a bit far to go for a deception, but—”

“Edward,” Bruce said, “it's me.”

And it was the voice that did it. So rough and gravely, yet with such a smooth and confident undertone. Something finally clicked into place.

“Wayne?” Edward snapped. “You've got to be kidding me! You're—I've spent all this time—”

His eyes kept straying to Wayne's chest. Orphaned billions sure went a long way towards personal fitness. Who had been behind that scar on his hypochondrium? Had it been the Riddler's own hand that had left that mark?

Edward realized his speech had devolved into nonsensical sputtering and stopped talking again.

Wayne was staring at the floor. Through the floor. At nothing. He seemed like a man who had lived too long in too short a space.

Edward stemmed the first few trickles of compassion and turned it into contempt. It wasn't like Wayne was doing this for his benefit. There had to be an angle. Had to.

“I suppose you think this will sway me,” he said dryly, discarding the crowbar again. He had no need. Wayne was unarmed. Shirtless and unarmed.

“It's a little late for that.” The way he said it made it sound like it was a little late for quite a few things.

Edward smirked, though inside he was glowing with glee. Wayne was about to admit defeat!

“Well then, why the...display?” he gestured to Wayne's discarded shirt and his bare torso, just gleaming with a hint of sweat—now _stop that_ , Edward.

Wayne smiled, just a little. And Edward hated that smile.

It was the smile of someone so effortlessly attractive, who had been handed the world from day one and thought everything could be smiles and sunshine if we'd only just get along.

“I think I can admit this now...out of all the people I've known in this city, I've felt the most in common with you...all of you.”

Edward laughed and it turned into a cough halfway through. “I'm sorry. What?”

“I have. It's why I've always fought so hard for justice, on both sides of the equation. Whether you appreciated it or not.”

A low chuckle started off in Edward's chest. “So, because you get knocked on the head by a polo ball one too many times and decided to dress up like a flying _rat_ , you think that puts you in line with the world's greatest genius—”

“I know you, Edward.” His name again. Damn that rough/smooth baritone. “I know how it was for you. All of you. And we know something all the people living normal lives in this city can never know.”

“Why, detective. You make it sound like some sort of club!”

“More like a survivor's support group. We feed off each other, Edward. And I think now, after tonight, I can admit that.”

Wayne drew closer. Edward had a moment of fluttery panic before he managed to fix himself in place. He wasn't afraid of a bully like Wayne. Not anymore.

“Really?” he croaked. He cleared his throat. “I ask again, because you sidestepped the question. You think because you had the money for a fancy diploma mill, it puts you on the level of my intellect? When I had to scrabble and claw for every morsel of knowledge that came my way?”

He meant for it to sound contemptuous. It came out bitter.

Wayne's eyes softened, just a fraction.

Edward gulped at the sudden onset of adolescent fascination with Wayne's jawline. He was a genius, and like all geniuses he didn't need to spare a thought for the...carnal things.

“I'm not going to insult you by comparing us,” Wayne said, faint hint of a smile teasing around his mouth. “but I feel like we understand each other better than we let on.”

He laid a hand on Edward's shoulder. Edward winced and hated himself for it. Wayne saw.

“It's alright, Edward,” he said, “I'm not going to hit you again. I'm past that.”

Edward's mouth was so dry he could barely get a sentence out. “So what, Dark Knight? I'm—”

“Call me Bruce.” The hand slid comfortably down to his back. Edward was momentarily at a loss for words.

“You think you can just come in here and casually order me around?” he snarled as he put a hand out and, by complete accident, touched Bruce's chest. “You think that—you work out a lot, don't you—we can just be on a first name basis, just like that?”

Bruce's palm was making slow, warm circles around Edward's spine. “I was hoping.”

Edward tried to force a laugh. It came out dangerously uneven. His hands slipped down Wayne's stomach to his hips. “Well, I think—a little to the left—I think the mighty Batman is admitting defeat! I think he's so stymied by—oh, god—my superior intellect he has abandoned his sad attempts at outwitting me and—a little more—has decided to try confusing me instead. It won't work!”

Wayne—Bruce—slid his hands down to cup Edward's ass and pressed their mouths together. Edward leapt up on his toes a little and gripped Bruce's shoulder blades tightly.

When they parted for air an eternity later, Edward automatically said, “don't laugh.”

Bruce said, “what?”

Edward gasped, painfully aware of his own sudden erection. Bruce brought their hips together and Edward realized the Dark Knight was also hard, possibly harder than him. He had done that. The Riddler had made the Batman hard.

Edward was so overcome he pressed another kiss on Bruce. And another. And another.

If he had been able to spare the synapsis for analysis, he might have realized that this was what he wanted all along. To effect the Dark Knight, to be acknowleged. But those brain cells were currently occupied by the conundrum of how hands that had beaten him so brutally in the past could be so gentle.

They were traveling back to Edward's bare mattress, the one where he'd licked his wounds after every defeat and dreamed of revenge. Edward was tearing Batman's last piece of armor off, taking Bruce's cock in his mouth hungrily so he couldn't change his mind and leave. He was bouncing on Bruce's hips like a broken trampoline, shamelessly screaming his name, mixing it up with his alter identity, sometimes even dropping in Selina's without meaning to.

Bruce moved like a robot: solid, sure, and capably. He fucked with precision, pistoning until Edward came with a shout and he came with a repressed grunt.

 

They lay side-by-side, staring at the swirl of shadows the various riddle-devices made on the ceiling.

“You're thinking of _him_ , aren't you?” Edward asked.

Bruce said nothing.

“I understand. He was always first, wasn't he? Always pushing to the fore like a demanding child. And now he's gone...what do you have?”

Bruce was staring up at the ceiling. Edward could see him clearly at this close distance, even without glasses. The rugged outline of his stubbled jaw. The noble, trustworthy nose. And those eyes.

If justice could have a color, he thought idly, it would be that same kind of grey-blue. Harsh. Piercing.

“I have to tell you, Edward. This is my last night.”

Edward swallowed. “You're leaving?” he asked, the petulant note he'd always hated creeping into his voice.

“I have to. I'm...finished.”

“You don't have to go. You could make a new identity! There are plenty of other animals!” God, was he really begging his nemesis not to leave?

“It's not just that. It's my time to go. I'm sorry.”

Edward could feel the breath hitch in his chest. No. _No_. he was not about to cry over the Dark Knight. He sat up.

“So what, that's it? You're just going to leave, just like that? What will become of crime in Gotham now?”

“They'll find someone new. Someone better. Someone they deserve.”

Edward blinked rapidly, clutching his jacket to his chest.

What came out next he meant to sound defiant, but it just sounded sulky.

“W-well maybe _I'll_ take up crimefighting, hmm? Put on a ridiculous suit and pound my self-righteous tirades into the hearts of criminals?”

Bruce's expression was unreadable.

“And I'll outwit my enemies without having to beat them up,” he babbled, “and I'll hack their bank accounts so they can't fund their gangs and hijack the cameras around the city so I know when a crime is committed and I'll put special locks on all the cells so they can't break out, a-and I'll be the best crime fighter, better than the boy in red and blue down in Metropolis, better than you ever were.”

He was just rambling, waiting for Bruce to tell him he was ridiculous as always.

Instead, Bruce sat up and said, “that sounds like a plan Edward,” and kissed him. He had a smile on his lips, not one that indicated he was humoring Edward but a small one that was more sad than happy. He gave Edward another kiss, this time on the forehead, and Edward leaned into it, staring off into nothing.

He didn't move as Bruce rose and dressed, he didn't move as Batman exited the lair through the front door(how very conventional, he really had lost his touch) and he didn't move until the last blinking light on his riddle-tracker went out.

Fight crime. He had tried, once. Of course, someone had put a stop to _that_ , but he'd at least succeeded in getting Mayor Hill impeached.

Could he? Could he fight alongside the flatfoots again?

...of course he could, nothing was beyond such a vast intellect! He'd scrub the city of crime, much more efficiently than the bat-family ever could. He'd be so good he'd make the former Batman, wherever he scampered off to, insanely, frothingly jealous.

...and then maybe, just maybe, he'd come back.

Edward stood. Important things first. He needed a costume.

 

**Author's Note:**

> wow, this game. this game, wow.  
> I think someone needs to teach the developers the line between "grudgingly admiring of" and "gay, gay, so gay for you he would have your adopted babies" Like, seriously, even Scarecrow seemed to be getting in on the fun. and don't even get me started on Mad Hatter.  
> Wait, what am I saying? no one teach them that.


End file.
